Words can wound and wounds can heal

Since Norwegian language history has not miraculously become any more interesting but I still have to know about every twist and turn of it the last two hundred years for my exam, here are three more procrastinational McShep drabbles!

One kind of hurt/comfort one in the aftermath of a couple of Wraith managing to sneak into Atlantis and then the (post-coital) aftermath from different POVs.

John can no longer confidently trace the line of events that brought him here, but between the thunder of his own pulse and the glass paintings of the gateroom and the trembling shape of Torren held securely to him, it doesn’t seem too important.

He blinks against the glare of the room; everything is too bright and the people milling around him are interchangeable flashes of colours and noise flickering by and circling around in his head like moths. It occupies all the space in the world that isn’t filled with the horrible hitching sounds of Torren crying.

John tucks Torren to him even closer, probably too hard but two tiny hands are still in a near-death-grip around his neck so maybe not. John is seeing Wraith in every damn corner, in every shadow shuddering at the edge of his vision.

“It’s okay, buddy,” he murmurs against Torren’s hair, though he doesn’t quite believe it himself. It seems way too easy. “They’ve gone, it’s okay now.”

One of the spots of colour falters and hovers and folds into focus as Major Lorne.

“Are you two alright, sir?”

The words need some serious parsing through John’s higher brain functions, which have largely been taking backseat to the reptilian hindbrain the last few hours.

Torren’s fingers are drilling almost painfully into his shoulder, blissfully, miraculously strong and warm and whole.

“Yeah, I think we’re okay,” John tells the pale oval of Lorne’s face balanced on top of the smudge of dark uniform. “Keller should take a look, though, just to be on the safe side.” It takes him a few minutes to recognize his own voice. It sounds way too steady considering how his head is swimming. “Where’s Teyla?”

“She’s on her way up here, sir. They’ve got the last Wraith cornered down in the lower levels. Ronon’s taking care of it.”

“Good.” Torren’s sobs have subsided into small sniffles. John maneuvers him a little more onto his hip so that he can see his face. “Hey, buddy, you hear that? Your mom’s on her way. I guess she kicked some Wraith butt, huh?”

In a turn of events unheard of since Torren discovered the power of his own voice as a three-month old, he’s mostly quiet, just nods with slack dark eyes and buries his face in John’s neck in an unguarded slump.

John tucks his hand over the back of Torren’s head, wincing a little as his fingers brush the hair that is clumped and sticky with Wraith blood.

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Three random McShep drabbles because exams are looming on the horizon and it’s freaking me out and I have no appropriate coping mechanisms but rampant escapism.

One pining!John, one vaguely angsty and not-at-.all-vaguely vague one and then one smutty fluffy one

John makes a point not to think about it too much, and usually it wouldn’t be very hard.

He doesn’t think a lot about sex, really, never has; from time to time the offer comes tumbling into his lap and he’s happy to oblige, but that’s about it. It’s been a feature of life, much like a direly needed shower or a really good sandwich – pleasant, but not really a competition to things that go over 200 mph.

In a distant sort of way he knows that guys do more for him than women do - he also knows that right up until very recently guys were about 300% more risky to get involved with and women, by contrast, generally smelled a lot better and were about 300% less likely to get him banned from ever flying a military aircraft again.

If Holland hadn’t managed to crash his stupid ass in Afghanistan it might have turned out differently, but he had and it didn’t, so John hadn’t given it any more attention.

The problem right now is that John thinks about fucking Rodney even when he smells like stale lab air and old sweat and blue jello.

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Ariadne’s last natural dream is one of wistfulness; it’s about the ending of childhoods.

She dreams of a giant structure built like mangled ribs crushed into each other, walls smooth and white and unblemished. It isn’t a labyrinth, or if it is, it isn’t for her. She walks straight through it, stepping between the streaks of sunlight washing through the slits between the bone pillars.

In the centre there’s a sandbox, mile upon mile of softly curving dunes under an open blue sky.

The walls curve around it, built like an amphitheatre. It smells like spring in there.

A child is playing with a spade and bucket, dark head tucked in like a comma in the great big silence of the sand. It takes Ariadne fifteen minutes to walk over to where it’s sitting, distances shifting and tensing in the dreamscape.

“What are you making?” she asks the child. Before the face turns up she knows that it’s herself, kid nose upturned and stubby, knees muddy and bruised like all the best late summer evenings.

“Dunno yet,” Little Ariadne says. “You want to join in?”

“Sure,” Ariadne says, crouching down and taking a rake.

Up on the tribune is her father, looking another way.

Cobb is there too, blonde hair a blur in the shadows. He’s holding a red thread in his hand. The red thread is unravelling from Ariadne’s clothes like kite string. She tries to tug on it but he doesn’t notice. Then she shrugs off her red hoodie and starts making a pile of sand next to Little Ariadne’s.

“Are you digging for minotaur skulls, cherie?” asks a woman’s voice from behind her, light and smiling and tinged with French.

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after a career of writing strictly PG-13, not-even-comfortable-with-writing-kisses rated stuff I’m suddenly working on three PWPs at the same time

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